Rosenbaum receives distinguished conducting award

By PATRICIA DONOVAN

“I hope that the Ditson Award will focus even more attention on the enormous number of extremely gifted composers in this country writing choral music, and on the opportunities to hear these works performed.”

Harold Rosenbaum, associate professor

Department of Music

Multiple award-winning Harold Rosenbaum, associate professor of
music and director of choruses at the University at Buffalo, is one
of the most accomplished, prolific and revered choral conductors of
our time.

On March 30 he received Columbia University’s 2014 Ditson
Conductors Award, the oldest continuing award honoring conductors
for distinguished contributions to American music.

The award, which carries a $5,000 prize, was presented by Fred
Kerdahl, Fritz Reiner Professor of Musical Composition at Columbia
and secretary of the university’s Alice Ditson Fund, at a
performance of the New York Virtuoso Singers, founded and directed
by Rosenbaum, at Merkin Concert Hall in the Fritz Reiner Center for
Contemporary Music in New York City.

“I hope that the Ditson Award will focus even more
attention on the enormous number of extremely gifted composers in
this country writing choral music, and on the opportunities to hear
these works performed,” Rosenbaum says. “Frankly, it
feels wonderful to be recognized for decades of obsessive devotion
to this repertoire and to modern music in general.”

Rosenbaum founded the New York Virtuoso Singers in 1988. They
are considered leaders in contemporary American music and one of
today’s top professional choirs. He also is the founder and
conductor of the internationally acclaimed Canticum Novum Singers,
celebrated for its stylistic versatility and expressive range, and
artistic director of The Society for Universal Sacred Music.

A tireless proponent and advocate for contemporary composers,
particularly American composers, he also directs the Harold
Rosenbaum Choral Conducting Institute, held annually at Columbia
and UB.

In writing of Rosenbaum’s selection for the Ditson Award,
New York Times music critic Allan Kozinn wrote that he was an
unusual choice in that past winners of the award —among them
James Levine, Leonard Bernstein, George Manahan, Christopher Keene,
Mstislav Rostropovich, Leopold Stokowski, Eugene Ormandy and last
year’s winner Jeffrey Milarsky — all have been
orchestral conductors.

“The contemporary American choral repertory is
enormous and growing,” Kozinn wrote, “and Rosenbaum is
one of several conductors who have made a specialty of it within a
broader range of works stretching back to the
Renaissance.”

Rosenbaum has presented the world premieres of about 475 works,
more than 60 of which he commissioned. His concert on March 30, for
instance, included works by Ernst Krenek, Thea Musgrave, Yotam
Haber, Karen Siegel and Michael Schachter, most of them
premieres.

He is regularly invited to perform with leading orchestras and
at prestigious institutions like the Tanglewood Music Festival and
the Juilliard School, and is a sought-after guest conductor,
clinician, adjudicator, funding panelist, coach, lecturer,
consultant and educator.

Rosenbaum was the 2010 recipient of ASCAP’s Victor Herbert
Award “in recognition of his contribution to the choral
repertory and his service to American composers and their
music,” and the 2008 recipient of the American Composer
Alliance’s Laurel Leaf Award, previously given to such
legends as the Julliard String Quartet, Leopold Stokowski and
George Szell in recognition of “distinguished achievement in
fostering and encouraging the performance of new American
works.”

He is lead choral conductor for Parma Recordings and is a
Soundbrush Records artist, a three-time recipient of the
ASCAP/Chorus America Award for Adventuresome Programming of
Contemporary Music and a recipient of Chorus America’s
American Choral Works Performance Award.

The Ditson Conductor’s Award was established in 1945 by a
bequest to Columbia by Alice Ditson, widow of the noted Boston
music publisher Oliver Ditson, “for the encouragement and
aide of musicians.” The bequest also endows fellowships,
public hearings and publication of the work of talented
musicians.